The lack of contemporaneous access to court documents has caused irreparable harm to the American public's right to scrutinize the conduct of military prosecutors and the rulings of the presiding military judge. This will surely taint the final outcome of Pfc Bradley Manning's trial.

"Military confinement. That's like a term of art," said the spokesperson for the military district of Washington (MDW) – which is responsible for convening a fair and impartial trial for the accused – to an American TV reporter last summer. The reporter was known for investigating infotainment websites during pre-trial sessions. "The practical effect?" commented the spokesman to the reporter. "He's in jail."

Despite Manning having been held longer than any accused awaiting court martial in US military law, Judge Lind ruled in February that the government had not violated his speedy trial rights. Moreover, in a case where the first amendment is vulnerable to chill and prohibition – namely, because the accused is charged with aiding the enemy and espionage for disclosing government information to the public – the public was denied access to not only the court's speedy trial ruling, but also over 30,000 pages of court documents until the third day of Manning's trial, which was 1,103 days into his pretrial confinement and 18 months into the legal proceeding.

At Fort George "Orwell" Meade, home of the NSA and the US Defense Information School, managing the message for a "docketless" pre-trial was facilitated by the spokesperson for the military district of Washington. He was tasked with explaining the proceedings to a press pool, forced to compare notes after mile-a-minute recitations into the court record by the presiding military judge, Colonel Denise Lind.

"You would say, 'He's in a jail'?" asked the American TV reporter of her de facto MDW editor. The same reporter also inquired later whether I found George Clooney handsome. "I think 'military confinement' is the most accurate," replied the spokesperson. "Luckily, I have nothing to do with that."

For five and a half months, the former spokesperson for the MDW did not disclose to the anemic press that he was a former member of the prosecution. In fact, his emails with the Quantico Brig commander about Manning's underwear removal are part of the evidentiary record concerning Manning's unlawful pretrial punishment at the Quantico Brig, where he was stripped of his clothing against the recommendation of the Brig mental health providers. In light of this revelation, the military district of Washington recently required credentialed media to sign "ground rules" prohibiting them from naming staff without written approval.

Manning made his plea knowing the prosecution lacked forensic evidence for a transmission in November 2009. The November transmission fits into the US government's theory of the case that ties it to the grand jury investigation of WikiLeaks.

The public also did not know that military prosecutors not only rejected Manning's proposed plea, but even threatened to charge him with an additional ten-year offense on top of the life sentence plus 149 years he already faces if convicted on their case.

Moreover, the public did not know that Manning is charged with a newfangled offense, which is not tied to any existing US federal criminal violation or punitive article of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, called "wanton publication". All that military prosecutors have to prove to convict him is that he had knew that terrorists use the internet.

Transparency is vital to the public's perception of the legitimacy of the criminal proceedings. The obscurity managed by Col Denise Lind, the military district of Washington, and the US army has discredited the imminent outcome.

One reason is the continued assault by the Obama administration. Awhile back I posted a list of providers who are resisting the governments requests. These include Mozilla, Firefox, and a whole list of others including sites like Reddit.

The Obama administration is pushing legislation that

will punish Internet service providers who fail to cooperate with FBI requests and court orders. The FBI has revealed that its agents often "lack the time" to obtain search warrants, and so they have gotten into the bad habit of asking Internet service providers to let them in without warrants.

The second type of punishment sought The second category of punishment sought by the administration

is for Internet service providers as to which the FBI has obtained a warrant. A search warrant typically authorizes the government to enter private premises and look for the specific items designated in the warrant. But it does not require the custodian of those specific items to find them for the government. This proposed legislation would change all that.

The government has subtly revealed that when it comes to digital data it often does not know what it is looking for, and its agents lack the skills to hook into the Internet providers' systems. This raises another set of questions, likely to escape members of Congress as they examine this latest assault on the Fourth Amendment.

The Framers were very careful when they wrote the Fourth Amendment, as it imposes the most explicit requirements on the government found anywhere in the Constitution. It requires that all search warrants "particularly describ(e) the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized." So, if the government follows the Constitution, it cannot seek what it is unable to identify, and it cannot compel the custodian of whatever records it is seeking to do its work for it.

Until now.

If enacted, the proposed legislation will punish those Internet service providers that fail to share secrets with the feds. The Obama administration hopes the legislation, if enacted, will enable the feds to set up a system that will let them tap into Internet service providers' data directly from FBI offices, without having to serve the warrant or visit the Internet providers' premises.

What a temptation for abuse that will become...

The FEDs admit they don't even know what they don't know and lack the skill to find out so they demand that third party private firm employees become de facto secret agents for the government.

Agreements with private companies protect U.S. access to cables’ data for surveillance

By Craig Timberg and Ellen Nakashima, Published: July 6 E-mail the writersThe U.S. government had a problem: Spying in the digital age required access to the fiber-optic cables traversing the world’s oceans, carrying torrents of data at the speed of light. And one of the biggest operators of those cables was being sold to an Asian firm, potentially complicating American surveillance efforts.

Enter “Team Telecom.”

In months of private talks, the team of lawyers from the FBI and the departments of Defense, Justice and Homeland Security demanded that the company maintain what amounted to an internal corporate cell of American citizens with government clearances. Among their jobs, documents show, was ensuring that surveillance requests got fulfilled quickly and confidentially.

This “Network Security Agreement,” signed in September 2003 by Global Crossing, became a model for other deals over the past decade as foreign investors increasingly acquired pieces of the world’s telecommunications infrastructure.

The publicly available agreements offer a window into efforts by U.S. officials to safeguard their ability to conduct surveillance through the fiber-optic networks that carry a huge majority of the world’s voice and Internet traffic.

The agreements, whose main purpose is to secure the U.S. telecommunications networks against foreign spying and other actions that could harm national security, do not authorize surveillance. But they ensure that when U.S. government agencies seek access to the massive amounts of data flowing through their networks, the companies have systems in place to provide it securely, say people familiar with the deals.

Negotiating leverage has come from a seemingly mundane government power: the authority of the Federal Communications Commission to approve cable licenses.

Cloud computing is dead. Foreign businesses in competition with American businesses will be pulling out of the cloud by the truckload. China's industrial commercial spying is nothing compared to American corporate espionage and now everyone knows it. Silicon valley has shot itself in the foot by agreeing to do deals they thought would give them proprietory advantage.

A white, vegan, 22-year-old woman from Essex, N.J. is suing the New York Police Department after she was allegedly stopped, frisked and partially strip-searched for no good reason under the city’s controversial stop-and-frisk policy.

In a federal lawsuit filed this week in Brooklyn, Bard College graduate (and environmental rights major) Samantha Rosenbaum claims that NYPD officers threw her against an unmarked police car on July 17, 2012, reports the New York Post.

The alleged incident occurred in the middle of the day in the hipster haven of Williamsburg, a Brooklyn neighborhood just across the river from Manhattan’s Lower East Side.

At the time, Rosenbaum was an intern at Vaute Couture, a vegan clothing store on Grand Street in Williamsburg dedicated to producing a line of clothing that is “flattering” and “cruelty free.”

She was on her way back to the store from the post office when, she claims in the suit, she took time to engage with a kitten behind a gate.

The Public Safety Department of the state of Maranhao says in a statement that it all started when referee Otavio da Silva expelled player Josenir Abreu from a game last weekend. The two got into a fist fight, then Silva took out a knife and stabbed Abreu, who died on his way to the hospital.

Police say enraged spectators invaded a football field, stoned the referee to death and quartered his body after he stabbed a player to death.

The statement issued this week says Abreu's friends and relatives immediately "rushed into the field, stoned the referee to death and quartered his body."

Local news media say the spectators also decapitated Silva and stuck his head on a stake in the middle of the field.

The Muslim Brotherhood’s top leadership was more or less decapitated when the army seized power Wednesday, July 3. Next, the generals plan to send security forces to fan out across the country for mass arrests of thousands of local activists. They will be confined in detention centers already in preparation.By this action, Gen. El-Sisi will be treading in the footsteps of Gemal Abdul Nasser in the fifties and Anwar Sadat in the seventies. Those rulers kept thousands of Muslim Brotherhood national and field operatives in pirson and under tight control for years before gradually letting them out on condition they did not run for office.The army chief, while bracing for Washington’s condemnation, is also assured of approval by the Gulf rulers led by the Saudi royal house.

I wonder if the Egyptian's internment camps will be as nice as Israeli prisons?

If only the Muslim Brotherhood had not used spray paint to show their anger...

Oh that's right, they threw kids off of roof tops, had on the spot virginity checks, murdered and raped coptic christians, burned down churches, called jews the decedents of apes and pigs in meetings with USA officials.....

Remember how this blog slams "Israel" for keeping it an open air prison?

Egypt Deploys 30 Tanks to Gaza BorderEgypt is in a state of high-alert due to massive, countrywide protests against the rule of President Mohammed Morsi, which have seen millions take to the streets. Since the latest round of protests began on Sunday, at least 16 people have died and hundreds have been wounded.

this from may:

Egyptian police have sealed off the Rafah border crossing with the Gaza Strip in protest at the abduction of seven security personnel in Sinai.Reports say police locked the gates and placed barbed wire at the entrance.Rafah is the only regular exit from Gaza for 1.6m Palestinians living there. Other crossings into Israel are allowed only in exceptional cases.The three policemen and four soldiers were captured while travelling in the peninsula, east of El Arish.Four of the men worked at the Rafah crossing, reports said.An Egyptian security official said the Rafah crossing will remain closed until the group is released, the Associated Press news agency reported.

The Jamaat Ansar Bayt Al-Maqdis group, which operates in the Sinai Peninsula, took responsibility on Friday evening for the alleged launch of two Grad missiles toward Eilat on Thursday.

A grad Rocket..

Now when they are shot at arabs by arabs?

Al Arabiya with AgenciesAt least five people have been wounded in southern Lebanon on Sunday when two Grad rockets exploded in the Shiite-majority Hezbollah district, a Lebanese security source said.The attack may have been a response to a speech by the militant group's leader Hassan Nasrallah a day earlier, according to Reuters, in which he committed to fighting in Syria's conflict on behalf of his ally President Bashar al-Assad.“Two Grad rockets hit the southern suburbs of Beirut. One rocket struck a car showroom where four people were wounded and vehicles were damaged,” the source told AFP.

They are NOT called "homemade" or firecrackers.

But let's remember a Grad is not a can of Spraypaint. After all "Price tag" ATTACKS have sprayed BAD words, a war crime don't ya know...

Palestinian rocket and mortar attacks on Israel from the Gaza Strip have occurred since 2001. The attacks have killed several dozen people, mostly civilians, and injured hundreds,[1][2] but their main effect is their creation of widespread psychological trauma and disruption of daily life among the Israeli populace.[3] Medical studies in Sderot, the Israeli city closest to the Gaza Strip, have documented a post-traumatic stress disorder incidence among young children of almost 50%, as well as high rates of depression and miscarriage.[4][5][6]The weapons, often generically referred to as Qassams, were initially crude and short-range, mainly affecting Sderot and other communities bordering the Gaza Strip. However, in 2006 more sophisticated rockets began to be deployed, reaching the larger coastal city of Ashkelon, and by early 2009 major cities Ashdod and Beersheba had been hit by Katyusha, WS-1B[7] and Grad rockets,and in 2011-2012 to the cities of Kiryat Gat, Gedera and Ramat Negev.[8] In 2012, Israel's capital Jerusalem and commercial center Tel Aviv were targeted with locally made "M-75" and Iranian Fajr-5 rockets respectively.[9] A few projectiles have contained white phosphorus.[10][11][12][13][14][15][16]Attacks have been carried out by all Palestinian armed groups,[17] and, prior to the 2008–2009 Gaza War, were consistently supported by most Palestinians,[18][19][20][21] although the stated goals have been mixed. A public opinion poll conducted in March 2013 found that most Palestinians do not support firing rockets at Israel from the Gaza Strip.[22] The attacks, widely condemned for targeting civilians, have been described as terrorism by United Nations, European Union and Israeli officials, and are defined as war crimes by human rights groups Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.

that's from wikipedia.

So this begs the question.

IF Southern Israel is not in dispute by anyone, why are the civilians being bombed?

WE GET IT, Israel, although not up to European and US standards for civil rights, is not as bad as its neighbors. On other matters, Israel’s Mossad institutionalized assassination, a real nasty habit picked up by the US drone policy and we all know how much in love the Bush/Cheney regime admired the tactics of Israeli security and happily aped that with Homeland Security, an unfortunate term coincidentally used by the apartheid regime in South Africa.

Separate but unequal in the settlement homelands still beats the Syrian and Iraqi violence. We are all deeply grateful for Israel maintaining the relatively high standards. Tough luck for the natives.

No matter, the US government is well down the road to achieving moral parity with our indispensable ally. Thank you Jesus.

During my first eight days and last four days I was kept in a basement cell below Abdeen Police Station in central Cairo. Besides a small entrance area, the main cell area was approximately five by nine metres. During the first period I shared the cell with thirty other prisoners and in the second with over forty others. Obviously there was no space for any beds or chairs or any furniture. There was not even sufficient space on the floor to sleep. We were packed so tightly together that you had to sleep with your knees in the air and even then every half hour prisoners would accidentally stand on your feet while struggling to reach the toilet.

One consequence of this overcrowding was that almost everyone went down with flu during my first few days there.

At Abdeen due to the overcrowding, lack of any soap and lack of any pegs or space to put clothes it was impossible to wash properly. The toilet/washroom was a tiny space of little more than one square metre cordened off by a dirty sheet with a single squat style toilet and a broken tap with water continually cascading down the wall. The only place to hang clothes - one or two pieces at most - was a short piece of old string from which the partition sheet hung. However only privileged inmates (those dealing in drugs or who had supplies of cigarettes brought to them from outside) got to to use the washroom for enough time to be able to wash. Others who spent more than a few seconds inside would be turned out by those prisoners working directly for the kabeer, the mafia style boss among the prisoners.

Garbage was stored next to the tiny washroom area and as a result pieces of rubbish would block the drain so that raw sewage would often flood the cell. Luckily there was a small raised ledge around the room on which people could store their blankets and this was high enough to stay above flood level but there was no possibility of sleep for anyone until the drain could be cleared. There was an open manhole which exposed the sewer drain just on the inside of the cell door. Normally this had a large dirty cloth draped over it so that we didn’t have to be constantly reminded of the full reality of our squalid existence. Whenever there was a blockage the inmates themselves would try to clear the drain using improvised tools. I watched as one man pushed a cut down plastic bottle attached to the end of a pole for over an hour without any success. On this occasion and many others it had to be done by someone from outside the cell which usually meant waiting at least several hours.

At Abdeen the police didn’t supply any food to prisoners and all the food came from prisoners’ relatives. Prisoners alleged that officers were taking commission from relatives when they brought food. I once saw money placed in a police officers hand but I can’t say that this is conclusive proof. Foreigners without local relatives or friends had to resort to begging.

It also goes almost without saying that in the small cell at Abdeen there was no kitchen or food preparation area or indeed any type of cooking equipment provided or even any type of electrical sockets. One result was that inmates boiled tea by burning plastic cups (they burn slowly) below a bottle of water. This created a hazardous level of smoke from burning plastic in a very confined space. There were only three small windows high up on one wall.

4. LACK OF WATER

During trips to and from the court the vans were often overcrowded and would frequently park in the sun for long periods of time during which the temperature would climb quickly. Several times prisoners became desperate in their pleas to guards to bring water. In one instance as I was being transported from my first court appearance water was deliberately denied for a long period and handcuffed child prisoners were beaten when they tried to take off their outer clothing and started begging an officer for water. Soon afterwards one collapsed from thirst. He was dragged out by his feet by the guards and the van door bolted again. It wasn’t until a considerable period of time had passed that they finally relented and brought some.

At night prisoners at Tora would sometimes call out for urgent medical aid sometimes shouting “Help, a man is very ill” or ”Help, a man is dying”, but no guard would come for hours, sometimes not until the next morning. When I asked at the clinic for cough medicine the doctor looked surprised explaining that they only kept asprin and despite there being nearly one thousand prisoners at Tora Mazraa there was only a doctor present for about four hours each day, between around 10am and 2pm. This despite the fact that article 33 of Egypt’s prison law says that “in any prison or hard labour prison, there should be a physician or more than one and at least one permanently resident.” ( HRAAP )

A German prisoner injured his knee three weeks before I left. However, despite promises every week that he would be taken to a local hospital to have an x-ray, the promised transport never arrived and when I left he’d not even been supplied with a crutch to help him struggle from his bed to the washroom.

When I was first arrested and taken to Abdeen police station more than half of those being detained in the cage and on the ground floor of the police station were under eighteen. Some were clearly under sixteen and I later learned from a news report that one was just eleven ( see My Time in Tora Prison for reference details ).

As described earlier in section 4 some of these children were deliberately deprived of water while in an overcrowded van and were later exposed to psychological noise torture ( see section 9 ) and then many of them were disembarked at a prison with adult inmates. I have no knowledge of whether they were kept in segregated cells but while I was in Tora prison I saw, on several occasions, one boy inmates said was seventeen though he looked younger, and he was kept in a cell on the first floor alongside over seventy adults.

7. BEATINGS AND TORTURE

I was beaten on my head and forehead by police with truncheons when I was first arrested. I describe the exact circumstances in my account in My Time in Tora Prison. I had to wait 4 days before having a medical report, other prisoners had to wait a lot longer. This report confirmed, I understand, that my injuries were compatible with “blows from blunt instruments.”

Immediately after my arrest I was taken to the Ministry of Interior where I was initially denied water “until you have answered all our questions.” One officer commented in a deliberately threatening way, ”Don’t worry. Soon you will tell us everything.”

While I was in Tora Prison the biggest fear prisoners had was the punishment cells. I never saw one but I was once told that the authorities knew I had been using a mobile phone and that I was going to be locked up in a punishment cell for at least a week. My informer said he could arrange someone else to spend the time in the cell instead of me for a substantial payment of cigarettes but since despite desperate pleas to fellow inmates I was unable to raise the money, he said he managed to fix the problem for me without cost. Whether this had been a scam or not I don’t know for sure but I doubt it since I had promised to pay him after a few days. An offer which the inmate generously declined.

The punishment cells allegedly had no beds or furniture. A prisoner was only allowed to wear his pyjama-like prison uniform, no jumper and no blankets or other possessions were allowed and it was then very cold at night ( often around 5 degrees ) as it was winter.

Prisoners would usually be sent there for using mobile phones or breaking other prison regulations. They would usually spend a week in the cell and would also usually loose parole and prison visitation rights.

I saw one man go down. He had been a real extravert – always smiling despite the depressing circumstances of our environment – but when he came back he had changed completely – he could barely look at you and his cheeks had sunk in while his body weight had obviously lost several kilos.

About four days after my arrest and immediately following a court hearing I was taken in a van with around 25 children to a large prison in Cairo. On approaching the building where the children were to be disembarked we could hear an eerie wailing sound like a man crying in distress every two to three minutes but every time the noise was an exact repeat of itself and it was obviously beeing broadcast through the prison loud speakers.

I can only imagine that the intention was to terrify newly arriving prisoners and it certainly had that effect on the children I was with when I heard it from the prison van. That was about four days after my arrest, possibly on 9 February.

10. EXERCISE

During the total of 12 days I was kept in the prison cell below Abdeen Police Station there was barely room to move ( see section 1 – overcrowding ) and we were only ever allowed out of the cell for a maximum of five minutes during visits and prisoners said that many of these visits were only possible through substantial bribes paid to officers. In any event visiting was only allowed in a tiny basement area in the immediate vicinity of the cell door and under the close eye of several overlooking police officers.

At Tora Prison most inmates in my cell were only ever allowed out either to attend court or for Friday prayers in the prison mosque. Christians would be lucky if they had a visiting priest even once in a month.

In my cell at Tora Prison there were many inmates who had been waiting a court verdict for over three years and several who had been waiting for up to five years. Prisoners would frequently come back from the court to say that the judge and postponed their trial by another six months.

12. MENTALLY HANDICAPPED PRISONERS

I was shocked to discover during my last stay at the basement cell below Abdeen Police Station ( at the end of March 2012 ) a mentally disturbed inmate, who was in obvious need of care, but instead was clearly unable to cope among ordinary prisoners. I quote from my account on my blog

“Some of the other prisoners became annoyed when he didn’t understand what they asked him to do. “Pick up the paper” one of the inmate bosses would shout and the man would just stare into space. Several times he was beaten with a leather belt on the head and on his back and once he was lifted up by several prisoners so that his feet were in the air and the kabeer (head prisoner) beat them time and time again. A Palestinian man next to me loudly asked “why ?” I warned him quietly “Don’t. You’ll get both of us (I was his friend) into a difficult situation. We are both about to get released.” Then I pulled him away to the far side of the room.”

There were several instances when women were forced to share overcrowded prison vans with men. On one occasion the guards did change their minds. The van was so overcrowded that many of us squatted handcuffed and crouched between the seats. The guards were simply shamed by the repeated shouts of haram alaik, what you are doing is wrong by Allah, from the prisoners.

14. LACK OF TOILET FACILITIES

During transport to court prisoners would often not be allowed any access to toilet facilities in the court buildings despite often having to wait six hours of more for their court hearing plus an additional hour or more’s travel to and from the prison. This could seriously undermine a prisoner’s ability to think clearly about what he might need to say in front of the judge. It was also humiliating for prisoners to be faced with guards repeatedly turning down desperate pleas to be allowed to use a toilet. More seriously it discouraged prisoners from drinking prior to the van transportation to and from the courts during which vans, as mentioned earlier, might park in the sun for considerable periods of time.

WE GET IT, Israel, although not up to European and US standards for civil rights, is not as bad as its neighbors. On other matters, Israel’s Mossad institutionalized assassination, a real nasty habit picked up by the US drone policy and we all know how much in love the Bush/Cheney regime admired the tactics of Israeli security and happily aped that with Homeland Security, an unfortunate term coincidentally used by the apartheid regime in South Africa.

Separate but unequal in the settlement homelands still beats the Syrian and Iraqi violence. We are all deeply grateful for Israel maintaining the relatively high standards. Tough luck for the natives.

No matter, the US government is well down the road to achieving moral parity with our indispensable ally. Thank you Jesus.

Though Jewish migration from Middle Eastern and North African communities began in the late 19th century and Jews began leaving some Arab countries in the 1930s and early 1940s, it did not become significant until the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. From the onset of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War until the early 1970s, 800,000–1,000,000 Jews left, fled, or were expelled from their homes in Arab countries; 260,000 of them reached Israel between 1948 and 1951 and amounted for 56% of the total immigration to the newly founded State of Israel.[2] 600,000 Jews from Arab and Muslim countries had reached Israel by 1972.[3][4][5] By the Yom Kippur War of 1973, most of the Jewish communities throughout the Arab World, as well as Pakistan and Afghanistan, were practically non-existent.

Notice in 1948 the majority of Jews arriving were from ARAB countries that threw them out? and that number only increased?

On other matters, Israel’s Mossad institutionalized assassination, a real nasty habit picked up by the US drone policy and we all know how much in love the Bush/Cheney regime admired the tactics of Israeli security and happily aped that with Homeland Security, an unfortunate term coincidentally used by the apartheid regime in South Africa.

Israel's mossad assassination of terrorists may not be perfect? by is leaps and bounds more accurate than the USA.

As for your comparison with the apartheid regime in South Africa? I heard that the apartheid regime in South Africa used other similar words too..

If you want to discuss the "camps" remember it's the palestinians that refuse to allow those folks to move out and settle into the other towns in the west bank and or gaza.

be honest.

The arab population of Israel and the palestinian controlled lands (west bank and gaza) as risen by huge numbers over the course of the last 60 years. So much? that the gaza strip no cannot sustain its'self,

Thousands of arab settlements now litter the west bank where none ever existed before.

The roads, schools and university system in place in the west bank? A gift from the evil Jews.

The truth?

Under Jewish/Israeli stewardship in the last 100 years? Has allowed hundreds of thousands of arabs to migrate and settle.

These hundreds of thousands of arabs have now grown into millions.

No different than the Jews that moved to Israel.

Under Israel control people WANT to live in the area once again.

Mark Twain told of how area looked in the 1860's

Mark Twain in the Holy LandMark Twain visited Israel in 1867, and published his impressions in Innocents Abroad. He described a desolate country – devoid of both vegetation and human population:

“….. A desolate country whose soil is rich enough, but is given over wholly to weeds… a silent mournful expanse…. a desolation…. we never saw a human being on the whole route…. hardly a tree or shrub anywhere. Even the olive tree and the cactus, those fast friends of a worthless soil, had almost deserted the country.”

He was amazed by the smallness of the city of Jerusalem:

“A fast walker could go outside the walls of Jerusalem and walk entirely around the city in an hour. I do not know how else to make one understand how small it is.”

And he described the Temple Mount thus:

“The mighty Mosque of Omar, and the paved court around it, occupy a fourth part of Jerusalem. They are upon Mount Moriah, where King Solomon’s Temple stood. This Mosque is the holiest place the Mohammedan knows, outside of Mecca. Up to within a year or two past, no christian could gain admission to it or its court for love or money. But the prohibition has been removed, and we entered freely for bucksheesh.”

This is from Haaretz and was published Friday 5 July 2013. It is a peephole into what is really happening in Israeli occupied Palestine to real people. It is everywhere in the territories under daily siege by extremist foreign settlers from Brooklyn, Easter Europe and Russia.

Your posts about luxury cars and million dollar homes only make you look to be a fool.

Any attempt to break the thread of three comments from Haaretz will be deleted. Comment at the end and have some consideration for those that wish to read the entire article without sifting through your chaff.

Now from some honest Jews and humanitarians:A day in Jinba, the tiny Palestinian village about to become a huge IDF training zoneEverything seems to be forbidden here; only the water tower of Avigail, the vineyards of Sussia, the cowsheds of the Maon Farm and the home of Mitzpe Yair are apparently permitted.By Gideon Levy | Jul.05, 2013 | 11:07 AM | 4

Everything is heartbreaking in Jinba: the ancient stone fences, the donkeys braying in the desert heat, the dark caves where villagers live. Photo by Alex Levac

THIS STORY IS BYGideon Levy

RELATED TAGSWest BankIsrael PalestineIDF

Two upside-down concrete blocks on the side of the rocky road that descends to the beautiful wadi constitute the landmark. This is where the Israel Defense Forces’ Firing Zone 918 begins, but all it says on the blocks at this particular place is: “Sick of the occupation.” At the end of the slope, in the heart of the valley, lies the tiny and beautiful village of Jinba. It looks like something out of the Bible: a collection of several tents, huts, sheep pens and caves that are cut off from the electrical grid and water system, cut off from the 21st century, cut off from any semblance of justice or equality. It is a place whose residents have been suffering for decades under the yoke of the occupation. All around is a green sea of “legal” and “illegal” settlements.

The High Court of Justice of the occupying state will decide on July 15 whether these people who are stubbornly attached to the land − the approximately 250 inhabitants of Jinba − will be allowed to remain in their village, or will once again be uprooted ‏(and later, will likely return‏) as happened during the big expulsion in 1999. The reason for that would ostensibly be to turn this arid piece of land into yet another training area of the army of the occupation, in effect to cleanse this plot of all its Palestinian inhabitants.

Everything is heartbreaking here: the ancient stone fences, the donkeys braying in the desert heat, the sheep and goats huddling in the pen to find a spot of shade, the tiny school built with donations from an Islamic organization in the United States, the dark caves where villagers live, and the white tent of the clinic set up about two weeks ago, thanks to contributions from an Italian charity and the Italian Foreign Ministry.

The tent is especially heartbreaking: It contains only a few dusty chairs, an equally dusty hospital bed and a special table for infants. Every once in a while, a doctor comes from the town of Yatta. The Civil Administration personnel who maintain law and order in the area already arrived here this week in order to document the place, to ask questions, to scare and threaten, probably on the way to issuing a demolition order for this forbidden tent. Needless to say, no house, road, vineyard or field belonging to any settlers is included in Firing Zone 918, in the land of the caves in the South Hebron Hills.

This week we went down to Jinba on the winding and bumpy road in a jeep belonging to Ezra Nawi, an activist in Ta’ayush, an Israeli-Palestinian political nonprofit organization. Without him, and without the other devoted and determined Ta’ayush activists − along with long-time volunteer attorney Shlomo Lecker, members of the Rabbis for Human Rights and Breaking the Silence organizations who work in the vicinity day and night − the ethnic cleansing would long since have been completed here. The members of these groups are the “good Israelis” of the south Hebron hills.

Nawi, sporting a purple Bedouin head scarf from Sinai, was afraid his jeep would be confiscated because he was driving into a prohibited zone. His colleague Guy Butavia made sure we fastened our seat belts in the back too, so there wouldn’t be another excuse for harassment by the IDF force that was liable to show up.

A tractor made its way with difficulty up the path opposite us, belonging to shepherd Khalil Younes, four of whose children were seriously wounded a few years ago when unexploded ordnance suddenly blew up; one died of his wounds. Younes was transporting goats to Yatta.

We stopped at an observation point next to Bir al-Eid, from which we saw the tent of Haj Ismail, the elderly shepherd who was beaten by settlers a few months ago, and whose home we visited at the time. And we saw the tiny rubber pipe that transports a small quantity of water to Jinba from cisterns on the top of the nearby hill; it has been slashed by the settlers a number of times. And we could also see the wells that were sealed off by the Civil Administration and destroyed and demolished houses. There, not far away, the administration confiscated two special bathrooms for the disabled a few weeks ago.

Everything seems to be forbidden here. Only the water tower of Avigail, the vineyards of Sussia, the cowshed of the Maon farm, the huts of Lucifer Farm and the homes of Mitzpeh Yair are apparently permitted.

From the mountain Jinba looked to us like a handful of tiny dots on the wild, uninhabited, primeval landscape. It’s hard to understand how a state can be waging such a prolonged war against it: The road leading in is not a road, and the village is not really a village, in the usual modern sense. Some residents live in Yatta too, during the dry season when the sheep and goats cannot graze in Jinba.

“Jinba Welcomes Visitors,” says the modest sign at the entrance. Last week a group of Israeli writers visited here at the initiative of Breaking the Silence. Among them were Zeruya Shalev, Eyal Megged, Alona Kimhi and Sayed Kashua.

“Life here is not natural,” one resident told us. “Everything is decided by the occupation.”

The new village school, built in 2011, may be the tiniest I’ve ever seen: four small classrooms, four to five tables in each, 35 pupils. In the classroom for first- and second-grade pupils there’s a blackboard and chalk. The days of the week were written on the board − a souvenir of the last lesson before summer vacation. There was no water in the drinking fountain, and of course they’ve never heard of an air conditioner or a fan here; two swings and a slide, without a drop of shade, constitute the playground. In spite of that, everything seemed to reflect touching devotion and care.{…}

{…}About a year ago the IDF confiscated the car of teachers at the school who come from Yatta. Last winter the IDF detained three jeeps and three all-terrain vehicles in which residents of the village, including little children, were traveling home. At 5 P.M., they were stopped; at 3 A.M., they were released. All that time they had to stand in the wintry cold, children and parents.

One Jinba resident, Hamzi Rabai, was among those detained. He said he won’t forget that night, at the end of which four of the vehicles were confiscated − as it said on the army order: “By dint of the authority invested in me according to paragraph 80, with respect to security directives, I seized the goods described herein. The reason: driving in Firing Zone 918 between Mitzpeh Yair and Jinba.” A phone number for “clarifications” was given and the order also bore the unreadable scribbled signature of the officer in charge.

The impoverished people were forced to pay a total of NIS 20,000 to get their vehicles back two months later, after a legal battle in which they were assisted by a lawyer, who of course also cost them money. The teachers’ car has yet to be returned, along with two additional vehicles that were confiscated at another time − belonging to the district veterinarian and the local veterinary service, whose staff came to treat the sheep and goats.

Nobody dreams of confiscating anything from the settlers for entering the firing zone. In a video camera given to him by B’Tselem: the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, one resident shows us pictures of a group of settlers who came to Bir al-Eid about two weeks ago. They arrived in the middle of distribution of sacks of flour donated by the U.S. Agency for International Development ‏(USAID‏), and the settlers made sure to disperse the people who had come for food.

That’s how it is here, in the land of fire, which only the High Court may be able to save.

Now tell us which civilized country that you are aware of that would tolerate this?

A Palestinian car thief was caught in the act by police last week, while wearing a white kippa in an apparent attempt to pass as a religious Jew, Tel Aviv Police reported on Sunday.

The man was reportedly spotted by detectives who were staking out a car parked on the roof of a Ramat Aviv parking garage on Thursday.

The car had been reported stolen the night before, and after detectives received a tip about its location, they began surveillance of the site to see who would show up to claim it. As they were watching, a young man wearing a kippa approached the vehicle, opened the front door and began trying to start the car, before detectives moved in and arrested him.

After the arrest police learned he is a 31-year-old Palestinian man from the village of Azun, south of Kalkilya.

Police said they are not sure if he stole the cars or was just going to pick them up, but the incident is consistent with how car thieves typically work inside Israel. Usually, a group of thieves from the West Bank will go into a city like Tel Aviv, steal cars and then park them somewhere like a parking garage to “cool off,” as police refer to the practice.

Later, usually the next day, the same thieves will return to the cars and drive them back to the West Bank. In other cases, they’ll tell an accomplice the make, model and location of the car, and have them pick it up and drive it to their city or village.

In this particular case, police received a tip on Thursday morning and sat watching the two vehicles until the man arrived around 4:30 in the afternoon, wearing a white knit kippa.

On Sunday, the suspect was taken for a court hearing, where his remand was extended until Tuesday.

Thousands of cars are stolen by palestinians a year. The profits fund the PA with payoffs.

Magnificent Ronald and the Founding Fathers of al Qaeda

“These gentlemen are the moral equivalents of America’s founding fathers.” — Ronald Reagan while introducing the Mujahideen leaders to media on the White house lawns (1985). During Reagan’s 8 years in power, the CIA secretly sent billions of dollars of military aid to the mujahedeen in Afghanistan in a US-supported jihad against the Soviet Union. We repeated the insanity with ISIS against Syria.